If the anti-EU ticket engaged many, many people then wouldn’t you expect to see a far stronger performance by UKIP in parliamentary by-elections?

Yet, if you check the results of the twelve parliamentary by-elections since the 2005 General Election, UKIP’s best performance was a 8.1% share of the vote in Bromley & Chislehurst (Eric Forth’s old seat). In two other by-elections the share was under 3%, and the rest (where they bothered to stand) under 1%.
http://www.parliament.uk/commons/lib/research/notes/SNSG-03726.pdf

Where once we could by replacing our government have a totally new government with new ideas that offer a new direction, all we get today is manipulation around the edges by an organization that is tied hand and foot by the agreements made by the previous administration.

Yes. Those two sentences perfectly describe my deeply and intensely held views in this matter.

This is one of the reasons I left the country.

When, as I expect, the pound reaches equality with the euro, my gross pay will have doubled from 32,000 UKP (back in the UK) to 64,000 UKP here in Amsterdam.

My taxation level has dropped, too and if I buy a house here, I would then be paying, I estimate, 17.2% income tax.

That’s what moving to Holland did for me.

(And if I was so inclined, I could smoke cannabis all day long in a coffee bar, hanging out with my friends. Oddly enough, civilization as we know it here doesn’t seem to have stopped because of it, despite it now being a Class B drug in the UK where possession is up to five years in prison and/or an unlimited fine).

Life can be *so* much better than it is. Why isn’t it? and the answer is : Government policy. Tax and spend.

There can be no logically supported argument that a government which is based on creating an elitists political group which has the power to rule without the interference of the people it rules, is in any way democratic. The fact that the EU politicians talk a lot about democracy does not mean they or their union is democratic.

If the role of politicians is to lead that implies they use their skills to convince the people of the rightness of their argument and take the people with them, that is not the case with the EU which has manifestly failed to do so and has instead created a system that is designed to omit the voice of the people and reduce the democratic principal to a meaningless consultation exercise, often after the event.

Reply: Yes, a proper democratic system elects generalists to assess and use the professional advice in a sensible way and to persaude the public of its value. If they get it wrong they can be replaced by another team.

I agree that the attitude of the EU to the results of referenda is disgraceful. There is a clear democratic deficit in the European project.

But we – sound Tories – need to remember Margaret Thatcher. Sometimes public opinion needs to be challenged and changed.

Politics is the art of the possible. It is possible for the political elite (or a party) to challenge the consensus. If that challenge fails, then the party will have to adapt of fail.

It is, sadly, possible for the EU institutions (and supportive national governments) to ignore the public will. But this – like the position of any party in any single country – can only be temporary. At some time there will be a reckoning.

The EU assumes that time (and changing generations) will work in its favour and resolve the problem. Hence the millions of our money poured into pro-EU education. But it won’t. And when the “project” goes wrong it will hurt all of us.

In the meantime, we should fight against the imposition of the Lisbon treaty against the will of the peoples of Europe and warn against the consequences if their will is ignored.

On the one hand are the people who sincerely believe that the people are right and they know what they want. This is the Rousseau stream of thought. The General Will cannot, ever, be mistaken. This idea came to prominence in the French Revolution/American revolutions. It has so far proved disastrous in a number of countries: Iraq, Uganda, Zimbabwe.

On the other hand are those who sincerely believe that government is a matter for experts. The “common” people are, for one reason or another, simply not capable of ruling themselves. This idea, first put forward by Plato, is Socialist, Marxist and it is also Conservative (in the 19th century aristocratic) sense. It has proved disastrous in Cuba, Russia and China.

The people who invented the EU were, of course, Socialist. It was a deliberate act (Christopher Booker) to put a technocracy in place by stealth. The EU strongly represents the Platonic idea, that government is best left to the experts.
The problem is that, apart from Libertas, there doesn’t seem anyone who is speaking up for those of us who believe in the first idea of power resting on the revealed will of the people in Europe.

(PS Both ideas are convinced that they are “democratic”!)

Is there any possibility that before the next election those making Conservative policy will adopt your ideas on democracy, or will they continue to waffle on the subject as at present.

One thing I would like too see is a referendum on citizenship of the EU, I did not want to be forced to accept this attack of my citizenship. Now because this unwanted and enforced citizenship the EU thinks it as the authority to speak for me. My rather jaundiced view of prospects under a conservative administration derives from the fact this it was one such that thought to confuse my citizenship, without even having the decency of allowing me the opportunity to give or withhold my consent.

“Go and find out what the people are doing, and stop them”.

Seems to fit with what Jimmy Goldsmith told us, that the EU is based on the philosophy of Hegel, which can be summarised as : “most people do not know what they want, they have to be told.”

Now, I wonder how we can possibly find suitable persons to do that telling ?

Alan Douglas